'National' broadcaster? Really?

MIGHT AS WELL CALL IT THE EBC?

I wonder what the reaction in England would be if one of the main BBC news bulletins of the day featured, as a major item, several minutes discussing a crisis in the French health service, then, shortly after, another piece on problems with French policing?  Something tells me there'd be a few people getting more than a little upset.

It's the BBC after all.  The British Broadcasting Corporation.  Dedicated to covering British news stories, of interest to British viewers, plus a bit of international coverage.  Isn't that what it's supposed to be?  So I wonder why, last night, the 10 o'clock news featured two lengthy stories that were really only of interest to the people in one region of the UK?  And I wonder which region that might be....?

The BBC recently rejected the demand for a 'Scottish Six', a six o'clock news programme, on BBC1, leading with national stories in Scotland.  A dedicated Scottish channel has been promised, although what shape that will take remains to be seen, so judgement must be reserved for now.  But it means that on BBC1, the prime UK station, we'll continue to be fed a news service heavily biased towards England.

You see this strongly on so much of the BBC's news and politics output.  How often is the UK's third most important political party, in terms of Westminster seats and party members, seen on Question Time?  And how often does a minority, far right party with only one MP (perhaps not even that in the near future) and a falling membership manage to be featured so often?  Strange, isn't it?

But wait.  On Radio Four this morning the news bulletin actually led with a story about Scotland.  Sort of.  Reporting Cruella de May's speech suggesting that the Scottish Government should stop playing with people's lives, get on with the 'day job', and stop fretting about independence?  Funny, I thought the day job included trying to represent the wishes and best interests of the people who live in Scotland?  Which has to include an independence option since May's dictatorially-inclined government quite signally refuse to consider all the practical suggestions that have been made to cover the needs of a population that voted decisively to stay in the EU.

As for 'doing the day job', this carries just a smidgin of hypocrisy from the head of a regime that's wasting millions of pounds on the Department of Impending Catastrophe, or Ministry of Truth, or whatever Davis Davis' shambolic organisation is now called.

[Head of DIC sounds about right for Davis....]

In some ways I don't blame the BBC.  The government-led attacks and threats it's suffered since the eighties have resulted in a steady decline in the quality of reporting, and a long way form it's once vaunted impartiality.  It has been bruised and battered and cowed into lapdog status.  The creative departments remain as impressive as ever, and produce's much that's fine in drama and comedy.  They even manage to occasional decent documentary.  But politically they have been hamstrung and too often sound like little more than a (Westminster) government mouthpiece.  Pro-brexit, pro-union, increasingly right wing and seemingly promoting ukip because they like a bit of 'controversy'.  (Would Fuhrage even have been heard of if Question Time hadn't slung him under our noses at every opportunity, thus helping to normalise his hate speech?)

A state broadcaster free from commercial influences should be a strong force for truth and good in society. But it also needs to be free from political influence.  The BBC has lost it's way.